We do not know his name.
At the Vancouver Art Museum on Sunday, I came across this Stan Douglas installation, Klatsassin. It’s a mixed media (does that sound like 1991 calling to your ears, too?) sort of thing and I found the portraits before the video.
The portraits are fantastic (Constable, Prisoner, Thief, Deputy — there are 8[?] more in the museum) and quite large, which suits me just fine. I like to get eye-crossing-close to photographs to see what’s within the plane of focus and to let them overwhelm my field of vision.
Klatsassin Portraits (Constable) 2006
I found my way into the video presentation smack in the middle of the Prisoner speaking Tsîlhqot’in to the Frenchman who’s translating it to French for the Constable whose Scottish brogue relays it all to us. Then they reverse the process, all the while looking at the camera — though at one point, the Prisoner is clearly irritated and turns as best he can in his chair to speak directly to the Frenchman.
Turns out there are, get this, 890 variations of the 5-minute film. !! …I watched just the 1. (:
I think what I like so well about the whole thing is that Douglas pulled an historical event from local history, but one that’s not been done to death (e.g., Custer’s Last Stand) and thus has ground to give in the way of interpretations. I dug it (and spent the bulk of my art museum time there).
